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A Garden in Italy

While I was away neglecting my modern web-presence-building duties, I enjoyed working on a particularly wonderful little project…. a Bed and Breakfast in Italy! I have never been to Italy, but when my good friend and talented architect Glenda Flaim showed me her work on Casa Incantata, I asked if I could take a stab at the planting design which had yet to be finalized. Neither of us had any idea what would happen. Come on, what do I know about plants in Italy?! Niente. The way we worked around that, and got the garden done was a genuinely collaborative effort involving Glenda, the Owners, their gardener, some dutch visitors, and me:

First, Glenda sent me a photo of the site with notes (in green) on her thoughts for the planting:

We chatted about the decisions on the photo – why the hedge, what is the lawn for, stuff like that. I studied snapshots of the building and tried to imagine what it would be like to be there in person. Glenda mentioned that the house had just won a national award for sustainable architecture, and was photographed soon after I started noodling with the design of the garden on paper. You can see pre-garden professional architectural photos here and here. She sent me a computer drafted file of the site and I gathered photos of plants that came to mind.

I started the planting design in June 2012:

I mapped out the planting design in areas with palettes. The areas got names: there was “lawn”, “spicy”, “meadow”, and “hedge”. I wrote a description of how each of these areas would be different from each other, what forms and colors I was trying to emphasize, and what colors I wanted to avoid entirely. I wrote out how these plants would change with the seasons and the desired effects. With lists of plants and their written intentions, the memos were translated into Italian and back into English through Glenda.

The Owners and their gardener started looking for the plants and sent word back what was available and not, and we figured out plants that might work instead. More memos handling spacing and layout were translated back and forth, plant research was done on both continents. Plants were purchased and installed as they were found; this took a few seasons to finish. Some were purchased in Italy, some shipped from the U.S., and the last, elusive bulb was a gift from some visitors from Holland who learned of the missing bulb in discussions of the garden during their stay.

Over the last 2 years, I’ve gotten a couple of photos a season so I could see how the garden was doing. They had wasted no time getting plants in the ground. Later that same year (fall 2012), the lawn (Hernaria glabra) which also extended between the pavers, was getting its start:

By the following Spring (2013) it had filled-in very nicely!

The other plants were coming along too:

By that Summer, you could see the different zones expressing themselves:

And just last month, I got another update:

It is challenging to know how a garden will look when you’re designing it, and there were many anxious moments when I knew they were investing in my advice and I could only hope that the Owners would like the results. I’m not sure it is possible to tell if the image in my head matches what the garden will become. I can’t know ahead of time if the Owners will like what the garden will become, and yet it is dependent on them and everyone who takes care of it to continue to support the design’s intention as the garden is maintained.

I am finally able to share (two years later) how things are going here in this post. I can also share that the owners are very happy with their garden, and conveyed to me this sentiment: